In the time I was away I released this, the 'SUN' EP, a short collection of lazy summer pop anthems, consisting of three musings: sun, summer romances and doing shots, in that very order. I think that is the order those three events generally occur anyway.
Click and download below if you feel warm and fuzzy. Or if you've ever actually looked straight at the sun and regretted it.
BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME. We need a 2011 catch up, I'm boring.
...unlike Friendly Fires. FUCK ME, "Pala" blew me away. Cut Copy's "Zonoscope" was one thing, but Friendly Fires are not ones to pander around an anthem like my beloved Indie-Aussies. Oh and while we're on the subject of this firmly established indie dance craze, Foster The People's album... a triumph! Check out "Call it What You Want" > CLICKY. Absolute blazing tune. Think Supergrass on cruise control, with a gorgeous bridge.
Bon Iver dropped his sophomore effort, probably the album of the year but SHHHH. A gorgeous yet bizarrely AOR tinged collection of delicate gibberish anthems with even lusher guitar licks than "For Emma", awash with smog pads and walls of falsetto. Owl City released an album which STILL occasionally tickles my guilty pleasure, um, bone, especially the godawful yet godwonderful "Deer in the Headlights": CLICK IF U DARE BLUD> (spot my favourite Canadian poplette in the video as well). And CocknBullKid... well CocknBullKid couldn't have sounded less like an artist called CocknBullKid if she tried. I'll say it again. CocknBullKid. Not a bad album, but not a great one either. Its defining feature is still that she calls herself CocknBullKid, although "Asthma Attack" deserves a listen.
Oh yea, and Lady Gaga released an album. You may have not known that. But to be honest, I suggest you listen to THIS instead.
I think the best thing to do is to present to you 20 ESSENTIAL tracks from the year so far:
ADELE - SOMEONE LIKE YOU
The song that needs no introduction. Although everyone claims to be sick of Adele, this simple ode to lost love will be as heartbreaking in 3011 as it is in 2011.
BLACKFIELD - OXYGEN
You'd never guess this came partially from Porcupine Tree frontman Steven Wilson who created THIS 20 years ago, but Blackfield have never hidden their pop rock tendencies, so this perfectly formed 3 minute pop song is merely a commercial step in the right direction, and that's a step towards EXPOSURE, without sacrificing any of the aching poignancy and melancholy that makes the Blackfield project more than worthwhile.
BON IVER - CALGARY
It's unclear whether this is a guilty pleasure or just simply jawdroppingly beautiful. There's no ignoring the fact that Bon Iver have gone all out with the first single from their self titled second record to pull at the heartstrings shamelessly. We've got a chord sequence that wouldn't be out of place on a Genesis record, a dare-I-say catchy spirally melody, and a distorted climax that simply cries out with sentimentality. But however Bon Iver has gone about it this time, there's no denying that "Calgary" is nothing short of the most beautiful rock (that word used loosely) song of the year, in all its nonsensical glory.
CHAD VALLEY - FAST CHALLENGES
Good old Chad Valley, good to see he's back and with no idea that the summer of chillwave was last year. It's still 2010 in his mind. In fact on the shamelessly 90s-dance influenced "Fast Challenges", it's probably 1992 in his mind. Part "Screamadelica", part "I Luv U Baby" and a whole lot of reverb, along with last year's "Anything" it has immediately become a benchmark of the currently-strangely-absent Chillwave scene. I don't know, it's all this Burial-inspired Dubstep and obnoxious Moombahton rhythms taking over this summer... whatever happened to sunny summer music?
CHARLI XCX - STAY AWAY
WHAT a debut single. Like a female Hurts, Charli XCX is Shakespeare's Sister as an only child, and "Stay Away" is definately her "Stay", with an infectious industrial beat and a deliciously deadpan vocal. Definitely one to soundtrack an underground, candlelit pagan ritual. Without the disturbing sacrificial context.
CHILLY GONZALES - YOU CAN DANCE
Yes, yes you can. It's not like you have a choice. That opening "WHOAAAA" might as well not be there, as I guarantee such a reaction from any such crowd who hear those addictive opening piano chords for the first time, as Boys Noize's beat turns up the heat and disco strings make the whole thing gloriously silly.
CULTS - YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN
Cults' album didn't live up to expectations, with only the singles really being the tracks worth hearing, and the whole thing dragging like Best Coast after one TOO many bongs. But "You Know What I Mean" is nothing if not a fist-clenching air-pumping stoner anthem for those who cannot be bothered to specify. So i'll just say... it's just... RAD man... ahhhh y'know what I mean.
CUT COPY - TAKE ME OVER
Another band chilling out and taking it easy and letting their party-perfect tunes do the work, Cut Copy's "Take Me Over" is "Hearts on Fire" at 4pm on a Saturday afternoon as opposed to 2am on a Sunday Morning. Saying that though, if those lo-fi 80s synths kicked in at that time on the Sabbath, it's not like I'd stop in my tracks on the dancefloor or anything... in short "Take Me Over" is 80s new wave bliss.
FRIENDLY FIRES - BLUE CASSETTE
Although it doesn't have the stargazing message of "Paris", "Blue Cassette" could well be the bands' biggest anthem to date. Once the tribal drums crash through the sonisphere, those orchestra hits smack you once, twice, THRICE in the face, and Ed Macfarlane yells "As I hear your voice, it sets my heart on fire!", it ceases to matter that the song is essentially about a grubby tape cassette found buried in the back garden, like some sort of glorified time capsule. Who has a tape player anymore anyway?!
JAMES BLAKE - THE WILHELM SCREAM
The only other track on James Blake's self-titled debut that even slightly resembles the sense of commercial melody of Feist cover (cover!) of "Limit to Your Love", "The Wilhelm Scream" was the obvious choice for a second single. However, radio-friendly tactics aside, the track is the nearest thing on the record that shows us a human side to Mr Blake, and there is an air of desperation in his voice as he (comparatively to the rest of the record) cries "I don't know about my love anymore, all I know is I'm falling, might as well fall in". You can tell that his computer can tell that James is close to breaking out of his robotic façade as the track progresses, when the fader is gradually pushed up until ominous cloud-synth chords have swallowed the track, and Blake's voice, whole. An intriguing, and actually quite emotional, listen.
JAMIE WOON - NIGHT AIR
A few of us heard this last year, and it remains far and away, Woon's one real triumph from the not-quite-amazing "Mirrorwriting". Gorgeously busy beats pitter patter away courtesy of the wonderful Burial, and Woon's voice is so delicate it could shatter.
JOHAN AGEBJORN FEAT. LAKE HEARTBEAT & LE PRIX - WATCH THE WORLD GO BY
I have no idea where this came from (though obviously Sweden), but "Watch The World Go By" is mesmerising, a desperate and heartwarming prayer to run away with a lover, supported by the kind of euphoric dance track that Chicane makes once in a blue moon. "Don't say you understand, just take me by the hand, and we'll watch the world go by". The words read like a ballad, but live and breathe through the medium of dance music.
THE JOY FORMIDABLE - THE GREATEST LIGHT IS THE GREATEST SHADE
Aside from the I-will-not-pass-comment Foo Fighters, there haven't been many bands flying the flag for big, bombastic stadium ROCK in 2011, so thank god for The Joy Formidable. A female fronted alternative rock band who would brutalise Warpaint in a scrap, TJF's debut "The Big Roar" is just that: guitars crash and explode against each other and choruses the size of China are abound. Closer "The Greatest Light..." (annoyingly long title), with its hypnotic 3 note motif and mimicking chorus is epic in epic proportions, and is surely meant to be played on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury in 5 years time.
KATY PERRY - LAST FRIDAY NIGHT (T.G.I.F.)
Most of us cry "FINALLY!" as this highlight from last years good-for-chart-pop "Teenage Dream" record gets its 15 minutes in the spotlight as the album's fifth (FIFTH) single this summer. The video is a stroke of cringe-genius and the track is obviously totally fucking stupid, and definitely a bad example to Perry's pre-teen audience, but is undeniably as infectious as Mumps. Let's face it, we all love it. SUCH AN EPIC FAIL.
NOAH AND THE WHALE - LIFE IS LIFE
Charlie Fink - ROCK STAR. "Life is Life" sounds like Journey, but after whining and bawling his eyes out for 40 minutes on his last record it's certainly time for Charlie Fink to, as he sings so optimistically in the track, "chaAAAAAnge his ways". It's a message to all of us, if you go through a bad break up, moan about it for a while, and then sing a song about yourself in the third person and give yourself a god complex. Just look at his carry-on in the video, it's not just his posh boy curls that make his head look big.
PATRICK WOLF - THE CITY
Patrick Wolf has tunes! Who knew? No longer the misunderstood artist, Patrick Wolf's "The City" is definitely the breakthrough track of the year, a hearty "top of the morning" to all his current fans and the thousand new ones who fell in love with this from the first "won't let the city destroy our love". An over-eager saxophone and idiot-with-a-hammer drum beat only add to the track's obnoxiously positive charm.
RADIOHEAD - CODEX
Essentially "Pyramid Song" under sedation, "Codex" is quite possibly the most beautiful funereal piano dirge Radiohead has come up with to date, despite all the "King of Limbs" backlash (come on guys, if you were a real fan, you'd pick your favourites and learn to love the rest, stop your winging!). Rather than the disturbingly realistic suicide note of 1997's seminal "No Surprises", "Codex" finds Radiohead, or rather Thom I suspect, flirting with the idea of suicide in a much vaguer and actually much sadder way. The Thom of "No Surprises" already had the gun to his head, ready to pull the trigger on that glistening, beautiful final chord, but the Thom of "Codex" seems stuck in a dream, an underwater dream by the sounds of the heavily filtered piano, where escaping is just that... a dream. It's poignant that in "No Surprises" and its notoriously major key, Thom was perfectly ready to pop his clogs, and yet the message in the infinitely more depressing "Codex" seems to be: 'escape is simply not an option'.
SBTRKT - WILDFIRE
So 2011 it hurts, "Wildfire" is a mix of every 'cool' sound that this year has offered thus far to dance music. Having definitely done his homework, SBTRKT's sound essential combines the trippy/dubby rhythms of Jamie XX with James Blake's depressed daydream melodies, and "Wildfire" even chucks in the jittery vocal runs of vocalist Yukimi Nagano, definately a voice for fans of Katy B. And you know what? It's actually a bloody good track. Well done SBTRKT, A+.
THE VACCINES - FAMILY FRIEND
The one down tempo track on The Vaccine's brilliant, blink-and-you'll-miss-it debut is the perfect comedown from the fast paced and energetic record that precedes it. Saying this, it's a lazy track, recycling its first verse and collapsing into a unplanned, unrehearsed dirge at the end, knocking the chorus up an octave to a range that singer Justin Young can (rather humorously) not reach for shit. But all of this can be forgiven for its heart-warming melodies and lovely, lovely lyrics, particularly the oddly tear-jerking "if you want a bit of love, put your head on my shoulder, it's cool". Over-long, unfinished, perfect.
WILD BEASTS - LION'S SHARE
Album number three, and Wild Beasts are hornier than ever. "Lion's Share" is dark yet subtly erotic, from the pulsing bassline to the delirious falsetto runs of remarkable vocalist Hayden Thorpe, and lines like "I take you in my mouth like a Lion takes his game" being alarming and seductive all at once. It's clear that when it comes to singing about love and sex, no band is anywhere near as qualified as Wild Beasts. Listen to the shivering vibrato in Thorpe's voice... he's done things you can't even imagine. "Boy, what you running from?" Take me now. Just take me.
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